Wednesday, 10 May 2017

The Prime
Minister is determined to stick to her unachievable pledge to reduce net immigration to an
arbitrary level of ‘under 100,000’ per annum.
In the meantime, the provisional wing of her party, aka UKIP, has
plumped for an equally arbitrary level of zero. Both figures have merely been plucked from
thin air in an attempt to appease voters who don’t like foreigners, and both
are justified by the use of the magic word ‘sustainable’, a word whose use is,
apparently, enough to justify anything with no further explanation
required. The difference between these
two policies is not one of kind, merely one of degree – an arbitrary target for
net migration levels regardless of economic impact is exactly that, at whatever
level it is set.

Both
parties rehearse the usual arguments; no matter how many times they’ve been
rationally and logically dissected, analysed, and debunked, they appeal to a
sector of the electorate and are therefore wheeled out time and again. I haven’t, in the past, paid too much
attention to the detail of UKIP policy statements, but based on what has
happened over recent years, UKIP’s policy today is probably just a foretaste of
Tory Party policy and arguments for the next election.

One
of the arguments that UKIP make is that England is the "sixth most overcrowded country in the world". I assume that they’re talking about relative
population density, but I can’t make any sense of this claim. This data from the Office of
National Statistics says that the average population of England is 413 per
square km, and this table shows the countries of the
world, which can be ranked in order of population density. The UK is obviously there as a single entity
in 51st position, but if we use the England-only figure, it would be
in 31st position, between Burundi and the Netherlands. Even if we exclude those overseas territories
which are not sovereign countries from the list, I still can’t get England to a
higher position than around 17 or 18.

But
let’s put aside the mere detail of the claim about England’s position in the table
of overcrowding, and turn to the essence of the claim itself – which is that
England is ‘overcrowded’. What exactly
does that mean? Clearly, anyone who
believes that country A is ‘overcrowded’ must have at least some idea of what
the ‘right’ population level for that country is, but I’ve never heard them
answering that one, and I don’t know how they could or would. It’s an utterly meaningless statement which
still manages to appeal to many of those hearing it, usually as a
rationalisation of a much baser instinct.

We
should also come back to the fact that they are quite deliberately talking only
about ‘England’ here. In Wales (149 per
square km), Northern Ireland (135) and Scotland (68), the situation is very
different. Do they think we’re overcrowded
as well? If they do, then merely
controlling net migration isn’t going to help them get the English population
down to their imaginary ideal level – and if they don’t, then why apply a
policy based on the situation in England?
I doubt that they’ve given a moment’s thought to that question.

Part
of the problem in all of the discussion about immigration is that the Tories
and UKIP do have one valid underlying point, albeit one that they’re failing to
grasp other than in a highly distorted fashion.
It is this: if the population in a country is growing and the provision
of services is not, then there will be additional pressures on health and other
services. (It’s also true that a country
with an aging population will face greater pressures on services such as health
and social care.)

That
statement is surely indisputable, and the resulting pressures are regularly
used as arguments by those opposing immigration. But that is ignoring the key caveat about
matching the growth in provision of services to the growth in population. If services do not keep pace with the
requirements of a growing population, it’s because the government presiding
over the situation is neither planning nor providing adequate services. When people blame immigrants, they’re
diverting attention from the failure of successive governments to make adequate
provision. Whose interests does that
serve, I wonder?